


crack your bones with veins of gold

by nextgreatadventure



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: F/F, mentions of abuse, mentions of self harm, murder?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 07:14:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8318764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nextgreatadventure/pseuds/nextgreatadventure
Summary: It feels like they’re stuck in time, like they’ve been stuck in this exact scene for so many years that they’ve both lost count: Annalise’s office in Sam’s house, golden lamplight, vodka, manilla folders full of bloody photographs and a million unsaid things between them.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been rewatching the show and bonnie being so ride or die for annalise is like, I don't even know? I’m obsessed with it. this show is a wild ride, who knows what's gonna change, but for now, here's this. spoilers and warnings for pretty much everything.

 

 

 

 

 _you burned me like a barn_  
_I burned safe and warm in your arms_  
-joanna newsom 

 

 

 

 

Bonnie was twenty three when she started her first year of law school and became a 1L for Annalise Keating. She’s over a decade older, now, a hell of a lot wiser, and yet once she found a place there (however small) beside Annalise, she never left. She’s not sure that this was the wisest choice she could have made, but then again, it never really felt like a choice to her. Nothing in her life ever has, or ever did.

(So she stayed. Where else would she have gone?)

Bonnie is thirty five now and empty and she thinks about how they never touch, not ever. Not anymore. Annalise used to touch her all the time, a hand to hers, a squeeze of the arm. She’s been a hardass since Bonnie first met her, but back then a “good work, Ms. Winterbottom” often came with the sort of physically anchored approval that Bonnie was starved for her whole life. Simple touches that Bonnie was allowed to react to, or not to react to: one small thing that was hers to decide. A touch that expected nothing from her in return. Bonnie lived for that. Annalise knew that Bonnie lived for that. 

This was back when it still hurt to smile, and the pressure of Annalise’s hand - the acknowledgement it represented - was one of few things that made Bonnie’s mouth lift slightly, made her remember that the breathing-in part came first, and then the breathing-out (which was just as important). Bonnie had wanted to die for as long as she could remember, but when Annalise told her that she had done something right, Bonnie believed her.

(The god that Bonnie used to pray to every hour of her life for eighteen years never once whispered “baby, this doesn't mean that you're broken” - that was Annalise. For this and for a million other reasons, Bonnie owes to her the sort of debt that can never, ever be repaid.)

When she was twenty four, at Annalise’s own urging, Bonnie started to see Sam for therapy. It was confusing. It felt like a betrayal to Annalise, because Bonnie found herself making progress and looking forward to the sessions. She found herself looking forward to being alone with him. 

Somehow, it was easier with Annalise’s husband. He was more transparent. He was always kind to her. Bonnie never had to guess at what he was thinking.

(She's never figured this part out, not exactly. Bonnie loved Sam the way she loved to tear at her own skin, loved him the way she might have loved a different father or a different lover. But Annalise. Annalise she loves more than her own skin. Annalise she worships - quietly, deliriously, inexhaustibly). 

Things changed. The more Bonnie saw of Sam, the more Sam began to touch her, too - knuckles brushed along thin wrists, lips against cheeks in greeting, side hugs that lingered. 

The more Sam began to touch her, the less Annalise did. This was just another in the long list of things that Bonnie was never given a choice in. 

What she began to receive from Annalise instead were long, venomous glares when no one else was looking. A set jaw below a hint of bared white teeth. Brazen, open comments on her growing incompetencies, and private stings meant to wound more than any public humiliation ever could.

Years passed. Bonnie never said anything. She accepted her punishment - for betrayals only imagined, and yet she still believed that somehow she must have deserved it. She stayed by Annalise’s side, not too close, head down, tucking every real thing so far below her surface that she forgot about them entirely.

Bonnie worked eighty, ninety hour weeks for Annalise, never flinched or complained about the way her small body had to compensate for the added weight. She drunk in each belittlement, quietly swallowed every dismissal and rejection that Annalise handed to her like so many small vials of poison. As time stretched on, Bonnie began to realize that the one truth of her life now was this: that for whatever reason, she would rather die slowly by Annalise’s hand than more swiftly by her own or anyone else’s. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The night she decided she would stop her therapy with Sam, Bonnie cut her long, shapeless hair into short, stark angles. She carefully applied a lipstick the color of roses, hid her thin figure under fabric that draped and ducked invitingly across pale skin and sharp bones, and drove herself back over to the Keating house. 

(Bonnie was twenty eight years old then - all grown up. She had never dreamed that she would live that long. She and Frank had been handling Annalise’s students for two years. Some of the students were scared of her, and Frank always had her back. Bonnie wanted so badly to believe that she was finally okay.)

 

 

“You do this for him?” Annalise had asked, her eyes lidded over with the third shot of vodka to her system. A hard day. A long case, one they'd all been working sleeplessly on, and one which was not even close to being over. Annalise’s eyes drew up and down Bonnie’s body. “He’s not here.”

Bonnie hovered silently in the doorway of her boss’s office. She was always so torn between nameless desires, both wanting Annalise and wanting to _be_ Annalise, wearing the debt that she owed around her neck like a permanent collar. Wanting Sam, which was incidental, mostly innocent. Showing up here on a night that he was away to tell Annalise that she wouldn’t be seeing him anymore, Bonnie supposed, was her unsteady compromise (she never did get around to telling her this, though).

If Annalise mistook Bonnie’s silence for an affirmative answer to the question she had asked, well then, Bonnie thought, that couldn't be helped.

They lingered, not quite staring at one another, for what seemed like an eternity.

Annalise finally threw back the fourth shot in her hand and stood. “Come here,” she demanded.

An in-breath caught reflexively in Bonnie’s throat, lodged there tightly. She took a single, timid step forward, then two, more steadily, and three, then four--

“Look at me.”

Slowly, Bonnie lifted her head. They locked eyes, and Bonnie had to concentrate, the habitual urge to look away was so strong. A foot of space between them. Six inches.

Annalise lifted a hand to Bonnie’s face. Her warm palm cradled the woman’s jaw, the tips of her fingers resting behind the curve of Bonnie’s ear. 

Bonnie heard herself start to breathe out into the silence. Felt herself melt into the touch. It must have shown in her eyes, on her face, the way she leaned into Annalise’s hand: relief, hunger, obedience.

And then, slowly, Annalise shifted. She tightened her grip until it was just shy of too hard. Her thumb drifted to the corner of Bonnie’s mouth, moved across her lips (firmly, carelessly), smearing the color. 

“I said,” Annalise punctuated each word with the sort of slow, alcohol-driven snarl that only she was capable of, “did you do this for him?” 

Her hand was so powerful, holding Bonnie in place.

(Bonnie found herself wondering if Annalise really had changed that much since the day Bonnie had met her, if she really ever had, at one time, been softer than this.)

Bonnie’s eyes slid closed. Her breaths became too short again, threading one after another onto a frayed, fragile string. She felt dizzy. She wanted to stop time, stay in this moment indefinitely. Feeling safe was something that Sam had long identified as one of Bonnie’s needs, not one that she had ever identified for herself. 

“No.”

“No?” 

Bonnie shook her head very slightly. “It’s not for Sam,” she whispered. She had never wanted so badly to prove herself more than she had in that moment.

“I don't believe you,” Annalise told her, and then curved her thumb languidly, experimentally, past Bonnie’s bottom lip to trail the soft pink inner curve of her mouth. Bonnie wondered briefly if Annalise was trying to shut her up, or maybe she was just toying with dominance, testing boundaries, playing some maddening game of brinkmanship.

But there were no boundaries, there never had been, and when Annalise’s thumb moved fully into her mouth, Bonnie let it happen. She whimpered, eased open her jaw, and willed herself to stay perfectly still. Bonnie’s teeth scraped against the soft skin of Annalise’s finger, her brows knit together over closed eyes. She didn’t dare open them to look at Annalise.

Annalise’s free fingers swept beneath Bonnie’s chin, came to rest against the sensitive column of her throat. Her tone when she spoke was soft, disdainful but revelatory, like they both understood something then that they'd only suspected before. “Don't tell me you did this for me.”

Her mind blissfully blank, Bonnie answered by opening her mouth against the woman’s hand, curling her tongue, pressing it gently against the pad of Annalise’s thumb. She stroked it once - and then again, and again, tasting Annalise’s skin, tasting fire throughout her body for the length of two wild, thrashing heartbeats. 

( _Everything I do is for you_ \-- Bonnie choked on the words before she could say them out loud.)

Annalise pulled away.

“Go home, Bonnie,” she muttered, turning back to her desk. 

When Bonnie opened her eyes, they were wet. She felt bereaved at the withdrawal of Annalise’s hand, missed the pressure immediately. Missed the whole of Annalise, who was still (and always) standing right in front of her. 

So Bonnie went home. She spent the night gasping for breath on her bathroom floor, tying her hands and fingers into knots, wishing vainly that for once, Annalise had been merciful to her then like she had been so many years ago.

The next morning Bonnie came right back to work. She was cool, collected, calm as ever. Only her eyes betrayed her, slight blue rings beneath them, swollen but hidden beneath black liner, pale powder. Bonnie wore that same rose colored lipstick every day for months. She obtained the testimony needed to win the case they'd spent so many sleepless nights calculating out, and then she did it again for the next case, and the one after that. She was colder toward the students, held herself more rigidly, paid more attention to everything and everyone around her. She held herself to a murderously high standard and never held Annalise’s gaze for too long.

(But Annalise didn't touch her for years, after that night. Not on purpose, anyway.)

Bonnie turned to Sam again because she didn't know what else to do. Because she thought maybe the infatuation she felt for him hid something real underneath. She certainly liked him more than she liked Annalise. Mostly she did it because it was the only way she had to hurt Annalise - even if it was passive, it felt a blunted sort of satisfying. After a while, like with most endeavors undertaken in the Keating house, this too ended up feeling like a self-inflicted punishment.

There was always a part of Bonnie that still felt like that same small, timid, splintered girl that Annalise and Sam had taken into their lives so many years ago. No matter what, no matter how hard Bonnie tried or didn't try or spoke up or stayed silent, Annalise held her (held everyone) coldly in the palm of her hand.

Bonnie didn't know how to explain to Annalise or to Sam that none of that mattered, though. Bonnie would have given her body and her heart and her mind willingly to either of them, to both of them, if it meant they would keep her around. Bonnie would have done anything, given anything, been anything they wanted, would have twisted the damaged self she knew into unrecognizable shapes for them and never looked back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bonnie spent the next few years of her life sleeping with men that she met in tame, moderately expensive bars. They were easy. She didn't have to feel anything but the sex when she was with them. She could close her eyes and ask for it rough, imagine it was Sam’s hands on her hips. She could come easily, over and over again, remembering Annalise’s fingers wet in her mouth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sam’s murder doesn't hit Bonnie as hard as she thought that it would. Neither does the possibility that he murdered Lila. What hurts the most is that Annalise is lying to her about it, and at the end of the day, Bonnie has to simply accept this fact as yet another bizarre truth of her life now. Sam had never been a good person (but then again, neither has Annalise).

The possibility that she’s been in love with Annalise since she was eighteen years old, sitting across from her in that dimly lit interrogation room where Annalise’s eyes were the warmest place to land, barely ever crosses her mind. It never crosses her mind because it just...doesn’t matter.

_Baby, this doesn’t mean that you’re broken._

It was because of Annalise that she was able to escape, able to go to college in the first place, and it was Annalise who held space for her in her classroom and in her home five years later.

How could it possibly matter, how could love, or even lust, hold a candle to the desperate, aching devotion she felt for this woman? Wouldn’t the love, in Bonnie’s case, be simply a product of that? It didn’t matter, she told herself. It did not matter. She needed nothing from Annalise other than to be given permission to stand quietly in her shadow.

Sam had been gone for weeks when Bonnie realized that he’d been nothing but a fantasy to her, a mask of kind words and her own damaged perceptions. But she’d never get closure now. For eternity, he would be something that was always just beyond her reach.

But Annalise. Annalise was never a fantasy (Bonnie has always been hungry for Annalise in ways she was never hungry for Sam, and this alone should have been proof enough of that).

 

 

Bonnie is thirty five and empty when she kills for Annalise, literally kills for her. And it's easy. Too easy. A knot tied in the back of a plastic bag and a few minutes of waiting, of ignoring Rebecca’s muffled screams, and then silence. If it would protect Annalise, Bonnie would do it again in a heartbeat - without shame, without reservation. She doesn't even have nightmares about it afterward (about other things, yes, but never that). 

This decision is one that she still can’t bring herself to regret, not even after Annalise calls her a monster for it, not even after the trust left between them fissures and sparks. Trust can always be rebuilt, Bonnie knows this. Even from poisoned foundations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Asher was a surprise. Bonnie had fallen into him like a life raft in dark, sea tossed waters. He lit up all the parts of her that she’d long since buried in the dark.

It’s not until after Annalise has already betrayed her, after both relationships are ruined (one beyond repair) and Bonnie’s voice is so tired from screaming that she realizes she’d rather remain unsaved and sea tossed, anyway. At least the darkness is familiar when it envelops her again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I was hurt and upset,” Bonnie pleads in a whisper. “You know that.”

Annalise won’t look at her. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

Bonnie takes a chance. She reaches for Annalise’s hand, grasps it tightly even as Annalise tries to pull it away again. Somewhere nearby a car door slams, echoes in the silent garage.

“Annalise,” Bonnie breathes. Her hands are shaking. She had meant it at the time - she’d wanted Annalise to die. She doesn’t mean it anymore. Their relationship has always been so fractured, and Bonnie still doesn't have anywhere else to go, or anywhere else she'd rather be. “You know -- you know that I…”

Bonnie doesn’t get to finish the thought. Annalise has wrenched herself free. It feels like a brand new punishment (not for Sam this time, but for ever threatening to leave her side, even for a moment).

“Save it,” Annalise snaps, disappearing into the car, leaving Bonnie bereft and aching all over again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes Bonnie wishes she could run away from all of this, start again somewhere else. Somewhere new. But then she feels the tug on her collar, and she knows that she belongs to Annalise, for better or for worse. Bonnie understands that any desire to have a normal life is the fantasy now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Do you want to hurt me?” Bonnie’s voice is quiet coming from the doorway. Her short hair is sticking up a little in the back and she reaches to smooth it down, a leftover anxiety reflex. She folds her arms across her chest like she’s cold even on this black summer night.

Annalise sighs, barely looking up from her papers. “Bonnie, not now.”

Bonnie crosses the threshold anyway, shuts the door quietly behind her. It’s late, one or two in the morning. There’s a nearly empty bottle of vodka on the desk and Annalise’s glass sitting next to it, a ruby crescent mark from her gloss still glittering on the rim.

It feels like they’re stuck in time, like they’ve been stuck in this exact scene for so many years that they’ve both lost count: Annalise’s office in Sam’s house, golden lamplight, vodka, manilla folders full of bloody photographs and a million unsaid things between them. A million scores to settle.

Bonnie approaches the desk, hands clenched into fists at her sides, and curves around to face Annalise. She unclenches and reaches out for the bottle. Slowly, she brings it to her lips and swallows what’s left, then she steps into Annalise’s personal space, their legs brushing together.

Bonnie leans back into the edge of the desk, obstructing Annalise’s view of her work so that she has no choice but to turn her attention onto the woman in front of her.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Annalise asks.

Bonnie repeats calmly, “Do you want to hurt me?”

Annalise scoffs. Turns her head away, like Bonnie couldn’t possibly be worth the time or effort it might take to engage. 

Bonnie reaches out suddenly to cup Annalise’s face with cold white fingers, tilts it up to face her. Where this bravery has come from, she has no idea. “Annalise,” she pleads again. 

The touch has softened Annalise, but only just. She lets Bonnie hold her cheek for a few long moments.

“Because I’ll let you,” Bonnie continues. “Will that make us even? You can hit me. You can draw blood. I don’t care.”

Annalise looks down again, bats Bonnie’s hand away. “That’s not what I want. You know that.”

“No, I don’t,” Bonnie says. “I don’t know what you want. I’ve never known what you want.”

Annalise is silent, but she doesn’t move away, doesn’t push her chair out to stand. Bonnie thinks this must mean something. It makes her braver still. She reaches out again, takes Annalise’s hand this time. Moves it up gently, places it around her throat. Winds their fingers together, and squeezes.

“This?” Bonnie asks. Annalise looks up, their eyes meet. Bonnie drops their entwined hands lower, past the collar bone that peeks out from beneath Bonnie’s blouse (her heartbeat pounds lightning strikes through her chest) until she’s pressing Annalise’s hand against her breast. “Or this?”

Bonnie thinks Annalise will shove her away. Thinks she’ll leave, slam the door so hard that it will rattle the bones of this whole old house. Annalise doesn’t do either of these things. She just stares into Bonnie’s eyes for such a long time that Bonnie forgets her own name.

“I really did ruin you, didn't I,” Annalise murmurs finally, contemplatively, like this is supposed to mean something to either of them. Like Bonnie hadn’t already been ruined the moment her own father laid eyes on her. Like the way Annalise has ruined her hasn't also saved her. Like Bonnie hasn't been starving for this for twelve long years.

Bonnie slides Annalise’s unresisting hand down the silk covering her body, past hips, down her thigh. Right to where the soft fabric of her skirt rides up to reveal bare skin. The small tremors she’d felt throughout her chest find their way into her voice when she says, “Not completely. Not yet.”

Bonnie watches Annalise’s face carefully.

“Isn’t this how you want me?” Bonnie touches the fingertips of her free hand to Annalise’s mouth. Runs her thumb gently below full lips, dents a crescent there with her nail. “Or do you want me to beg? I will.” 

(Bonnie can feel herself twisting shapes again, bending to meet Annalise where there is resistance, coaxing, ravenous.)

Annalise closes her eyes. She lets out a long breath that warms Bonnie’s fingers, and kisses them. One hand starts to slide up Bonnie’s thigh. Bonnie tilts her head back to the ceiling, the slightest whimper hidden on her next exhale.

Just when Annalise’s hand has disappeared entirely beneath Bonnie’s skirt, Annalise pauses.

“Do it,” she tells Bonnie. “Beg.”

Bonnie does (without shame, without reservation). With every new inch of herself given over to Annalise, Bonnie feels freer, feels finally forgiven.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bonnie drinks too much of Annalise’s vodka. The man they're representing triggers all of the weight Bonnie spends her life struggling to lift away from herself, brings it crashing down onto her, ringing in her ears.

She's stumbling from the office when Annalise’s arm wraps around her waist. 

“Easy,” her voice says softly. 

 

 

Annalise is pushing her down into a mattress.

Bonnie’s whole small body is sagging, trembling, and the sheets are so soft beneath her, they smell like Annalise, and this is all so much, too much. Bonnie cracks down the middle like a pane of glass shattering, one swift blow to her sternum, and she's sobbing.

Annalise eases herself onto the bed beside Bonnie. She takes one of Bonnie’s arms into her hands, starts to drag her sharp dark nails from Bonnie’s elbow to wrist, over and over, hard, and then harder, leaving thin pink lines down her skin.

“Like this?” Annalise asks. 

Bonnie’s face relaxes minutely. She closes her eyes again, breathes, concentrates on the sensation, the long, burning rhythm. Nods.

“Yeah,” Annalise whispers, her voice so uncharacteristically kind that it makes Bonnie’s chest ache. “I remember.”

(Sometimes it had been an elastic band around Bonnie's wrist that she'd snap, stinging against her skin when the memories tried to strangle her. Sometimes it was her own nails raking long white and red lines like chalkboard marks down her arms, or legs. Anything to keep herself from drowning. Once, Annalise had checked up on her in the bathroom - episodes, attacks, reactions were all common in her first year of law school before she learned better tools from Sam - and Annalise had been understanding, had always been the one who knew that Bonnie wouldn't break if she was handled too roughly. Annalise may have done many other things to her, but she never once treated Bonnie like she was made of glass and tiny bird bones. Annalise is the only one who ever understood that it was precisely because Bonnie had survived her childhood that she was unbreakable.)

 

 

Bonnie nods in and out of sleep.

She wakes to the feel of those fingernails tracing softer patterns against the base of her neck, down the slope of her shoulder and back again. 

“Go back to sleep,” Annalise murmurs. 

The touch makes Bonnie wonder if this is what having a mother who stuck around would have been like. Except it's Annalise, and Annalise is her family, but the touch makes her feel so different (leaves her winded, makes her throb for it, shivering). Every time Annalise touches her now, Bonnie’s neck is drawn closer on that leash and she knows (doesn't even care) that the rest of her life belongs to Annalise to do with what she wishes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everyone leaves, eventually. Sam, Nate, Frank. Eve. The kids.

Bonnie stays.

“Tell me where you need me,” Bonnie will say, sometimes about work, sometimes about Annalise’s body, or heart, or mind, it doesn't matter. It always ends the same way, with Bonnie on her knees and Annalise cradling Bonnie’s bowed head in her hands.

 

 

 

 


End file.
